We Decided to Travel the World. But First, We Made a Serious Budget!

[Yo yo yo! Got another killer guest post for y’all, this time around by my new friend Chris Biggs who decided to call it quits and go travel the world with his beautiful fiancée. If this is their idea of a vacation, I can’t wait to see what they do for their honeymoon!! ;)]

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After college I had three friends who, all separately, quit their jobs and set off to see the world. Following that time-honored tradition of taking selfies with the Mona Lisa, skinny dipping on Brazilian beaches, and stumbling around Amsterdam’s Red Light District’s smoky haze.

That kind of drop-everything-and-go travel has become so commonplace in recent years that I would be surprised if you didn’t know someone who’s also taken a similar path. Heck, they’re as American as apple pie and the Electoral College!

Now in our early thirties, my fiancée Lori and I began to yearn for that adventure, too, albeit in a more PG-13 sort of way.

Struck with a palpable desire to experience life beyond the daily grind of emails, meetings, and PowerPoint presentations, we made a pact one warm Northern California day in February 2016 to figure out how we could create lives based around world travel.

Wrapping Our Heads Around it All

A big change like this becomes exponentially harder to make as you get older, given career aspirations, the desire to have children, and the various other factors. I’m sure you know a handful of friends (and maybe even yourself?) who tossed around the same idea but ultimately chose to continue grinding things out at work.

In our case, we knew that travel was integral to our happiness and that revamping our lifestyle would require a comprehensive budget planning process to instill the confidence we’d need to make this life-changing leap work for us.

As a couple, Lori and I had all the trappings of a brick-and-mortar lifestyle: an overpriced San Francisco apartment, a car payment, employer-sponsored health insurance, etc. – all things that would need to change if we were going to press pause on our careers and go travelling full-time.

We also both felt that if we were going to quit our jobs and travel the world, we would need to do it for at least two years – if not longer – in order to justify to ourselves this major change. This needed to feel less like a sabbatical for us, and more like a total lifestyle transformation. Hence, the budgeting aspect was uber important.

How Do You Budget For Years of Travel??

In the beginning we were beyond puzzled. Most travel bloggers told stories about how they saved a few hundred dollars, bought a one-way plane ticket to Vietnam, and figured it out from there.

That plan didn’t appeal to us for a number of reasons – most notably because we would be leaving behind upwardly mobile careers into which we’d invested energy, passion, and years of our lives. So we wanted to make sure we were designing our new travel lifestyle with plenty of intention and forethought.

Compounding those fears, we were also unsure how to identify a target savings amount that would allow us to get through two years of plane tickets, Airbnb stays, and an insatiable hunger for Thai food? (Fact: I will never say no to Pad See Ew, which is a popular stir fry featuring delicious wide flat rice noodles).

So what did we do first? We sketched out the costs we expected to incur over the next two years regardless of travel, or what you could consider the “fixed” costs associated with day-to-day living, such as our cell phones, car payment, health insurance, food, and more.

To create even more budget flexibility, we opted to slash our housing costs by ditching our West Coast digs and moving in rent-free to the basement of a generous family member’s home, where we could live in-between trips. We decided to keep our car even though it would sit in the driveway during our overseas excursions, as it would come in handy for long road trips across the U.S.

A Look At Our “Fixed Costs” Budget

Here’s the initial estimate we put together, which assumes that we will be traveling outside of the U.S. for at least eight months per year over the next two years:

So we now knew that $35,000 would be the floor for our savings – meaning, that we would need that amount PLUS the actual costs of the travel itself in order to arrive at our target savings amount.

Conceptually, we wanted to focus on traveling to places where the cost of living was relatively low to increase the likelihood of our funds lasting longer. For our first year, Lori and I agreed to embark on an expansive Asia trip, a tour through Central and South America, and a road trip covering dozens of America’s beautiful National Parks.

A Look At Our Budget Including All Future Traveling!

Now came the hard part: attempting to estimate travel expenses for trips we hadn’t taken yet! Lori and I spent a lot of time together in front of our computers, searching for pricing details and discussing what kind of accommodations we felt most comfortable booking for each trip.

When we were done, the budget for one leg of our trip (to Central and South America) looked like this:

Here’s what we did: we picked the fifteen Central and South American countries we were most interested in visiting and made our best guess about how many days we would spend in each location. Then we estimated our daily expenses (hotels, food, transportation) and added up flight costs to and from the region – plus any additional flights between countries that we expected to incur in lieu of bus transportation. (Note: South America is a bus-friendly place in which geography requires fewer flights than Asia and other regions).

Our total cost estimate for the two of us to spend nearly three awesome months in Central and South America with modest accommodations? Just over $10,000. We did this same math for the big trips we expected to take and, finally, added together all of those costs to come up with our total savings number.

We Officially Quit Our Jobs!

After nine months of extremely aggressive saving, I’m proud to report that Lori and I have hit our personal savings goal and officially quit our jobs to travel the world!

We just wrapped up a cross-country road trip that took us to six U.S. National Parks in California, Arizona, and Utah, and are now on our way across Asia which will undoubtedly be an exhausting, exhilarating five month excursion for the first half of the new year.

We have one-way plane tickets booked to Kerala (in Southern India), and beyond that, all we have currently is a Google doc filled with notes on destinations we’d like to see in Nepal, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Philippines, and various other countries.

If you’re reading this thinking, “Hmm… that doesn’t sound like you’ve got this whole thing planned out yet, Chris,” you’d be partially right. And hey, to be fair, part of that is intentional – we want to have a general game plan, but also not feel bogged down by the rigors of locking in an hour-by-hour itinerary that would control our every move.

The greatest advantage Lori and I have now as travelers is that we’re unbound by most normal rules of travel, which allows us to be totally opportunistic in our decisions. My previous vacations while employed were usually time-boxed (translation: I could only get, let’s say, 10 days off of work), and I would need to pre-plan my location and activities every single day to get the most out of the vacation.

Now, however, we can jump on cheap last-minute flight deals or decide on a whim to spend an extra day on that beautiful beach in Bali! The best part, too, is that we no longer have the guilt of taking a vacation during the busy season at work, nor do we face the anxiety of returning to 3,000 unread e-mails.

Our Future Goals and Plans

In our second year (after our trips to Asia, the U.S. National Parks, and Central/South America), we’re planning to pick three to four cities to live in across the world, giving us greater opportunity to get to know the local culture over a period of several months.

That said, we are also are fairly certain that two years of full-time travel is about all we’re capable of doing; we have no desire (at least not right now – don’t hold me to it!) to live a nomadic lifestyle. Part of that is because we’d like to settle down and start a family, but it’s also because we have such great relatives and friends in the U.S. that it’s tough to imagine how rarely we would see them otherwise.

Ideally, Lori and I would like to move back to the U.S. and buy a home after our two years of travel, at which point our goal will be to either continue building out Over the Map, or re-entering the workforce. In either case, we know that regardless of our next career move, it will need to be something flexible enough to allow us to set our own schedule and support our passion to explore more of the world.

Planning Out Your Own Adventure

Even if you aren’t able to save for your world travels quite as quickly as Lori and I did, there may be opportunities for you to start traveling sooner than you think.

I have a number of friends who have tried living abroad semi-permanently and have funded their lifestyle using remote work gigs, which are perfect for folks with a background in high-demand areas like programming, web design, project management, marketing, and a handful of other crafts.

There’s a chance Lori and I will look at those options in our second year of travel (the first will be 100% focused on the blog – and taking killer photos for our Instagram account), and while I haven’t used any remote work platforms myself, my traveling friends have found good short-term projects using both Upwork and Fiverr. The latter even has some cool non-traditional options, including… wait for it… PET MODELING! You can literally get paid for snapping a shot of Mittens napping on the couch.

(Fair warning: if you e-mail me looking for consolation about how hard it is to fund your travel experience, I’m going to remind you that people pay pets to model. No excuses.)

However, since we’re currently pet-less and I’m definitely not model material myself, I made sure to end things well with my former employer (a large management consulting firm), as did Lori with her company.

It’s good to leave things well with your employers in case you need to come crawling back, and now we both have verbal offers to re-enter as employees after our travel is complete – even though we’ll probably be looking for something different at that point.

Whatever you can do to alleviate the anxiety of such a major lifestyle change is a win! But good luck trying to convince all of your friends or family not to freak out. Some of ours still think we’re lunatics for throwing away stable employment and paychecks.

Some Great Resources to Get You Going

That brings me to my last point: if you’re personally interested in making a change that will help you travel farther (and better), there are plenty of resources available to you.

Beyond our blog, you should check out Nomadic Matt – one of the most resource-rich blogs out there and often considered the gold standard in the business. Matt will guide you in identifying everything from your top travel destinations down to the best electronics for your trips.

Additionally, I’d highly recommend the podcast series Extra Pack of Peanuts hosted by Travis and Heather Sherry, a couple who share a similar story to ours. The podcast itself covers significant ground and, beyond being really well-executed, is a great place to get deep in the weeds on topics like travel hacking (free frequent flyer miles, anyone?) and how to start a location-independent business.

In the meantime, Lori and I will continue to make the most of our time on the road while working to bring you valuable insight, tips, and tricks along the way over at our own blog.

Questions, comments, suggestions?

Leave them below and I’ll be happy to answer them! At the very least, I hope you take a few minutes to revisit your own dreams again, whether they’re travel-related or not. They may not be as hard to achieve with a little planning and boldness!

******Chris is a travel blogger who, along with his fiancée Lori Kackenmeister, writes about the joy of travel life on their website Over the Map. You can also find them on Instagram, as well as Facebook.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: If you liked this post, check out our other one on how (and why) to take a sabbatical. We’re gonna just keep plastering stories like these up until everyone chases their dreams!! :)]

We Decided to Travel the World. But First, We Made a Serious Budget! was last modified: August 30th, 2017 by Guest Writer

BudgetsAreSexy readers – first, we have something important in common: we love this website (I may actually be addicted…). Hope you get some inspiration from our story.

We’re actually in Alleppey, India right now (check out our Instagram @OverTheMapTravel) for a few dreamy photos) and about to take a crazy 13-hour overnight train ride to Goa, which is a popular party/beach area on India’s west coast. At this very moment I’m sitting on a rooftop surrounded by so many different sights and sounds, reflecting on this big decision we made last year to travel – and definitely feeling like we made the right call.

I’ll be out of pocket for a half-day while en route to Goa, but I hope you all enjoy the article, and I’ll be back online here later to respond to comments/answer questions. You can always feel free to shoot Lori and I an e-mail ([email protected]) if you’re looking for some inspiration, too!

Great post, Chris and best wishes to you and Lori on this global adventure. I have been to Kerala and it’s called God’s Own Country in India. Their tourism website is a good place to start your research. India itself has so many nice places to see even before you leave that country to see other Asian sights. I wish you both the best in this brave and exciting sojourn to the world’s many great sights.

I think I’m going to have to add your blog to my rotation. Wow. What a story! It’s becomes so much harder to do stuff like that when you already have kids. I would love to drop it and travel the world and wish I had motivation to do so about a decade ago. We currently take 2-3 week vacations and do mini jaunts…until we hit early retirement, of course ;) But even when we do hit early retirement, we’ll be limited to 3 months travel at a time. (Think: school for the kids).Again, I absolutely love that you’re doing this AND sharing it with the world!

Yeah, kids part makes it tricky for sure. I know some world travelers home school their kids so they can go wherever, but def. one of those things that are different for everyone. I’m still afraid to take my two little kids on a plane haha… so it’s all road trips for us ;)

Thanks so much Mrs. MMM – appreciate the love and would be honored to be a part of your reading rotation :-)

And hey, there’s nothing wrong with 2-3 week trips and mini-vacations when you can find the time/money for them. At some point Lori and I will probably stop traveling full-time, at which point we’ll also need to find a routine like that to scratch the travel “itch”!

Wow, what a great adventure! Good for you guys in planning things out so well and taking advantage of the time before kids to go see the world. As Mrs. MMM mentioned above, it’s tough once the kiddos come into the picture.

Thanks for sharing. I love hearing about those of us out there who are going for it and taking that leap to catch our dreams. Since we went the route of getting married in our early 20’s and having kids right away we are prepping for the day we become empty nesters and can then pack up and go on the long awaited adventures without having to worry about living in a good school district and that stuff.

Thanks for sharing! Can’t say I don’t want to make my dream of traveling more a reality as well. My wife and I have one kid and another on the way so we are trying to balance travel with family, etc.

One thing we are considering now now is a semi permanent gig in London which will serve as home base while we travel and see Europe. This avenue seems to be more up or alley, not quite as daring as you folks! But it is a relief hearing you say there could be an option to return to your prior employers after your two years. Nice to have that in your back pocket!

I look forward to checking out your blog and following your journeys! Thanks for sharing.

Thank YOU! And hey, some would argue (myself included), that picking a foreign country as a home base is actually a smarter way to do it. You end up with a steady revenue stream, so you don’t have to do as much saving in advance, and if your gig is flexible enough, you and the family can take a bunch of really quality trips (and with cheaper flights – Europe has so many budget airline options)!

Would love to hear if/when you end up making the leap, so please stay in touch!

Wow, congrats! I do know a few people who just up and left for Thailand without a plan, but it sounds like you guys were cautious and methodical with planning it out. It’s so hard to plan EVERYTHING out when you’re dealing with so many uncertain variables, so I think you’ve got it figured out more than you know. :)

It’s also key to choose affordable countries for travel. Everyone loves Europe, but hot damn, the prices are so high there. It’s crowded and you really don’t get your money’s worth. But Central and South America are great choices!

Haha, I hear you – we went to Paris, Germany, and the Czech Republic last year and spent a fortune on the former (although Prague is really affordable, at least in terms of lodgings – we spent $15/night on an AWESOME AirBNB property).

The coolest thing about this is you know what you want, and you set out a plan to accomplish it. That’s awesome. Sounds like it will be an amazing experience visiting all those countries. I completely agree with not burning bridges with your former employers. You never know what the future holds. Leave those options open!

Wow! I give you a lot of credit to just take off and enjoy life and travel for 2 years at such a young age. I just had my first trip out of the USA to Ireland at 51! My first 2 week vacation in over 12 years. Life is short and we need to cease the moments!

It may be easier to travel before you have kids, but who says you have to have them? Plus, you can do it later in life when your kids are grown… There are many people in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond who are doing this type of thing for the first time…

I have a question. I see that housing is $0 in your budget, but don’t you have to pay for hotel/hostel?
We want to take a year off to travel around the world in about 5 years. When our kid finishes 4th grade, we’ll go.
Your Central/South America itinerary looks crazy to me. You’re on the road so much. When we go, we’ll spend more time with less destinations. You guys are young so it probably works well for you. I can’t travel like that anymore.
Enjoy!

Ditto J$’s comment – the $0 was for our hosing in the U.S. (thanks, mom, for putting us up!).

And to your point about cramming so many stops into a relatively short period of time: totally valid. We may actually consider pairing back our Central/South America trip just based on our experience in Asia right now (we’re packing up our bags every 2-3 days!!).

It’s definitely nice to see a lot of places, but there’s something to be said for really getting to know a place…

Wow, so awesome and what a great story! It’s also a great motivation to just take the jump into (a planned) adventure, whatever that may be.

We’ve only been 1 time outside Europe, and have our next trip planned to the west coast of the US in 2 months. We hope to add many more destinations in the years that are to come. Don’t know if we would travel the world like you guys though.

We might considering to do this when we are older, more like what Cara says, and when possible kids have grown up. This way, we have the time to grow our stock portfolio until then and could use the dividend income to travel around :)

Awesome way to go about life. I wish I could go back prekids and travel more (even though I do so fairly often for my career). It certainly is possible with sufficient planning which you folks have shown.

I might have missed it but what did you end up doing for housing? More hostel type thing? Air Bnb? RV? or something else. We’re looking at an RV type solution in retirement, though that’s a ways off.

We primarily do private rooms, usually in a guest house or a small hotel (or through AirBNB). In less expensive countries like India, southeast Asia, etc. we try to spend less than $25/night on housing, which usually gives us a pretty good selection. In places like Japan that’ll be harder to do (but luckily, we have LOTS of hotel points saved up from my days as a traveling management consultant)!

Check out our website’s “Our Faves” section for specifics if you’re interested, too. We use Booking.com a lot and really like it for budget accommodations.

And an RV is my retirement dream, too! My favorite kind of traveling involves driving around the U.S. and camping in national parks (we’re doing that this summer!).

Have fun traveling! Very impressed both of you guys can quit and travel so young AND come back and buy a house in SF after. Prices are softening right now so it might just be the perfect timing when you get back!

This is a great story! So many people don’t try to pursue their dreams when they can. They let their uncertainties holds them back. I’m glad you made a thorough budget to combat this issue.
What was the final number on the budget? Also, do you plan to do a before and after to see how much you over/underestimated?
I’m excited to see where your travels take you, Chris! Thanks for sharing this J$.

Thanks! Our total savings for two years of travel is just north of $100K, but I hope that number is taken with a grain of salt – no one needs that much to have months/years of fantastic travel experiences (we just wanted to travel a certain way, so it was our personal goal)!

And we’ll definitely do a recap after our first big trip (Asia – current in India!) this Spring to see how well we fared versus our budget. I’m already noticing that we didn’t budget in enough for country-to-country flights – some are more expensive than I’d originally seen.

I wish I had done what you’re doing when I was in my 20s or early 30s. Now some things at home are tying me down, but perhaps in my 40s I’ll do a super travel experience like this. I suspect that will put me in a minority demographically, but that’s ok, I don’t mind being a bit of a weirdo.

Woah, two years of travel with your fiancee sounds incredible. I think you were smart to have vague outlines instead of concrete plans. Things can change so rapidly, including weather and desire. Bon voyage!

Thanks for sharing such a great story! I was thinking about leaving my job this summer to travel however after reading your story I have come to the conclusion that I most certainly do not have enough saved up for this. I put aside one year’s worth of expenses but forgot to account for the actual travel expenses, I suppose I was kind of hoping to fund my travels with freelancing gigs. I do have two cute yorkies so maybe I will look into the pet modeling idea :)

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